Toshiko

Kluckner has made his reputation as a careful historian of Vancouver and the B.C. landscape, through his wonderful watercolours of what he has dubbed “vanishing Vancouver.” In Toshiko, narrative is pushed along by Kluckner’s light-handed drawings of the B.C. interior, where Canadian Japanese were “relocated” during World War II after being dispossessed of their homes, businesses and fishing boats, and their birthright in Canadian society.

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments for Kluckner’s latest venture came during the book’s launch at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre in Burnaby when an elderly Japanese woman told him that Toshiko “brought back memories and was true to the period.”